Southern Graves

Photo by David Seibert via HMdb.org "On the night of July 11, 1964 three African-American World War II veterans returning home following training at Ft. Benning, Georgia were noticed in Athens by local members of the Ku Klux Klan. The officers were followed to the nearby Broad River Bridge where their pursuers fired into the vehicle, killing Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn. When a local jury failed to convict the suspects of murder, the federal government successfully prosecuted the men for violations under the new Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed just nine days before Penn’s murder. The case was instrumental in the creation of a Justice Department task force whose work culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1968." As you likely (and correctly) surmise, the Klan was unprovoked and the jury that failed to convict was all white. Lemuel Penn rests at Arlington Cemetery. " NEGRO HERO Educator Buried in Arlington WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Lemuel Augustus Penn, Negro educator who was...

[Originally posted at the Your Peachy Past blog . Cross-posted here for my fellow cemetery wanderers!] Standing in Savannah's Wright Square (also known as Court House Square) is an impressive monument to a Georgia railway pioneer, William Washington Gordon. Here's what Lucian Lamar Knight has to say about the man and the monument: "One of the most beautiful monuments in the city of Savannah is the handsome structure of marble, in Court House square, commemorating the useful life of the great pioneer of railway development in Georgia: William Washington Gordon. He died at the early age of forty-six. But he gave the most lasting impetus to the material upbuilding of his native State and accomplished a work of constructive value which was destined to live after him. As the first president of Georgia's earliest railway enterprise, his genius was initiative. He was not only a pathfinder but a builder of splendid highways. Much of the subsequent history of railr...